Ntsikana (c.1780–1821), Xhosa evangelist and prophet, preached the gospel in Xhosa, using traditional imagery and music.
Numerous Protestant mission societies entered South Africa in the early nineteenth century, so that by 1884 fifteen missions (British, American, German, Scandinavian, Swiss and French) ran at least 380 mission stations. Catholic work among Africans began at mid-century but for many decades was limited to a few regions, such as Lesotho and Natal, and remained vastly overshadowed by the Protestants.
Many missionaries disapproved of mission stations, which they saw fostering artificial, isolated Christian communities and splitting African societies between Christian and non- Christian parties. Still, in the turbulent politics of nineteenth-century southern Africa, the mission station – often located on land granted by an African ruler who sought missionaries’ technical expertise and advice – provided a reasonably secure, semi-autonomous location for missionaries to build up their churches. In most regions conversions were discouragingly slow, and mission communities often appeared to nearby Africans as a hotbed of refugees, outcasts, rebels and persons accused of witchcraft and other crimes. On mission stations almost everywhere women outnumbered men.
Ntsikana’s version of the Christian church praise song as recorded by J.W. Bokwe in Ibali Lika Ntsikana in 1914.
Among Khoisan, whose independence had been lost early, conversions were numerous and quick, and in communities such as Lesotho, where Moshoeshoe befriended the missionaries and took an interest in their beliefs, significant conversions took place in the ruling class. But, as a rule, the most striking achievement of nineteenth-century missionaries was not the conversion of individual Africans but the introduction of agricultural techniques such as irrigation and ploughing, the inculcation of literacy, and the dispensing of rudimentary Western medicines.
The most successful evangelists were African Christians themselves. After minimum contact with white missionaries, Ntsikana (c.1780–1821) (see, Nxele Makhanda and Ntsikana), Xhosa evangelist, prophet and hymnodist, preached the Christian gospel in a purely Xhosa setting with Xhosa language, imagery, literary and musical forms. Charles Pamla, a former shepherd who became a lay preacher, translated for the California evangel ist William Taylor as the pair ignited American-style revivals all over southeastern Africa in 1866, with thousands of Africans declaring their faith in Christ.
Only a minority of missionaries followed Van der Kemp and Philip into active political advocacy. Some, like the French missionaries in Moshoeshoe’s Lesotho, wrote favourable accounts of their host kingdoms and publicly resisted colonial encroachment on their territory. Others, like many Wesleyans and German Lutherans, cultivated close ties with settler communities, their children frequently marrying into settler families and becoming white South Africans.
In the late nineteenth century, as British imperialism spread throughout much of Africa, English-speaking missionaries tended to be pro-Empire, but not necessarily prowhite settler, while many continental missionaries manifested suspicion of British motives. But the vast majority of missionaries attempted to minimise the political aspects of their work, seeking a neutral middle ground between black and white, and devoting themselves to the upkeep of their stations and the growth of their churches.
The Dutch Reformed Church, too, became intensely mission minded. The spiritual home of most
Dutch settlers, it faced a dilemma when black converts of its missions sought to use formerly all-white sanctuaries for worship, prayer or confirmations.
The mission at Zuurbraak near Swellendam was a poor settlement but there were several cottages that were neatly whitewashed inside. The walls of the cottages were of mud, the roofs thatched and few of the cottages had chimneys. In the same settlement were also hovels barely fi t for human habitation.
To enlist white settlers’ support for missions, the Dutch Reformed synod declared, in 1857, that where racial prejudice made it necessary, ‘the congregations raised up, or to be raised up, from the Heathen, shall enjoy their Christian rights in a separate building or institution’. Late in the nineteenth century the Dutch Reformed Church strengthened its role as a volkskerk (church of the Afrikaner people). Its ecclesiastical segregation
enabled it to participate actively in white nationalist endeavors while retaining a fervent commitment to missionary work.
By the turn of the twentieth century, conversions of Africans to Christianity came more rapidly. By then, most had lost or were losing their political independence, while they were experiencing drastic social change initiated by contact with the colonial economy. Deprived of the security of a stable society and its associated belief systems, many were open to a new message.
The Christian gospel was now being preached in many areas by African converts using the scriptures in vernacular translation. Migrant labourers converted to Christianity on the Witwatersrand gold mines headed back to the countryside, witnessing to their new faith. And African parents, formerly sceptical of mission-run schools, increasingly encouraged their children to attend, in the hope that literacy and skill in English or Dutch would help them prosper in the new colonial order. By 1911, almost a third of a million Africans, Indians and Coloureds were communicants (not just adherents) of Christian churches, while about 176 000 pupils of colour were studying in mission schools. Missionaries spread English among the African elite.
